Idioms – word lists, worksheets, activities, and more

Idiom list in developmental order

Basic– all the time, calm down, change your mind, cut it out, do it over, driving me crazy, feel up to, figure it out, get away with, get out, get out of hand, get on my nerves, give me a break, give up, go through with, hand me down, hang in there, hold on, How come?, in charge, keep an eye on, keep it up, last straw, make something up, make believe, never mind, none of your business, on time, once in a while, on top of, out of place, put on, put up with, quite a few, rub it in, show off, sick and tired, turn off, up to you, used to it

Later Developing – a long shot, all along, all in your head, all mixed up, an arm and a leg, at the top of my lungs, back to square one, barking up the wrong tree, beat around the bush, behind my back, blow off some steam, break up, butterflies in my stomach, by the book, count on, down in the dumps, do the trick, down the drain, drag your feet, end of your rope, end up, eyes on the board, half a mind, hand it to her, having a blast, hit the sack, find it out, foot in the door, go to your head, gung-ho, let go of, let your hair down, a long fuse, look down on, look forward to, look up to, lucky streak, nick of time, off the top of my head, on the dot, out of the blue, piece of mind, picture perfect, play with fire, put it off, put your foot down, run out of steam, skating on thin ice, so far, sooner or later, step on it, take a stand, take it easy, throw in the towel, turn the other cheek, turn something down, wrapped up

Secondary– across the board, ahead of the curve, ask around, back to square one, come across something, do away with, fit to be tied, get off the ground, go through the motions, go without saying, have a soft spot, icing on the cake, joke is on you, jump through a hoop, leg up, mind over matter, more than meets the eye, paint yourself into a corner, play it by ear, put our heads together, read between the lines, rock the boat, roll out the red carpet, sick as a dog, sing a different tune, sort it out, spread it on thick, take after somebody, took the words out of my mouth, turn over a new leaf, your eyes are bigger than your stomach, up and running, warm up to, wave a white flag

Idiom Worksheets – Basic

Previews – Click on picture to view a small preview of each activity.

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Documents – Click on Doc or PDF to download worksheets in preferred format.

Background Information on Idioms

One prominent member of the class of figurative language is the idiom. Figurative language, including metaphor, sarcasm, and exaggeration, differs from literal language in that it’s words connote an extra layer of meaning. These words add richness, complexity, and sometimes confusion to a language.

Idioms change rapidly compared to other words. They typically serve social cohesiveness functions within groups. Young people may not use the idiom “Its raining cats and dogs” while people of earlier generations may not say, “hold on”. Typical lists of idioms used by speech and language pathologists don’t begin to scratch the surface of the amount of idioms actually used in everyday language. Several idiom dictionaries claim to contain at least 4,000 idioms. More detailed information on idioms is abundant in language texts, libraries, and on the internet. Some idioms are comprehended during late preschool. (Abkarian, Jones, and West, 1992). Idioms are sometimes learned solely as concrete blocks of expression as has been traditionally thought, and also sometimes by breaking down and understanding the constituent parts of the idiomatic expression (Nippold, 1998).

Phrasal verbs are idiomatic, defined as a two word combination with a verb that isn’t necessarily understood by understanding the constituent parts, e.g. catch up, hold on, work into, show up, run into, quiet down, take over, show off, etc. Tests that assess for idioms include the CASL and the OWLS tests.

Methods of Elicitation

Idiom Goal Suggestions

William will use age appropriate idioms (e.g. hand it to her, wrapped up in, etc.) in sentences with 70% accuracy.

F. Scott will define age appropriate idioms, such as take it easy, piece of mind, and out of shape with 70% accuracy.

Thanks for the help with activities using idioms. I am a student teacher studying ESL and I was trying to find ways of making reading and writing exercises using idioms! This is a big help with my lesson plan!

A great help for the teachers.Thank you for helping us which we can be more an effective and efficient teacher. This is a big help esp. for the new starter student. God bless your site. I want more brief and emphasize topics.I’m hungry of this….lol

No, as far as I know there isn’t anything grouping more semantic types of words, and not much for morphemes other than Roger Brown’s work in the 70s and a few others since. This would be fascinating research if it were done, but would probably be outdated soon thanks to the quickly changing landscape in idiom use. More “closed” categories of words, such as pronouns and morpheme development would seem to be much more amenable to actually nailing down the order of acquisition, while open classes of words are more variable from time to time and place to place.